I felt like it was somehow overstuffed and yet completely undercooked. We don't even SEE Jenny die? She's just like,
"People hate me, I am aware of this" and the end? And could they have hit that unsafe balcony any harder? Once would've been shrewd, four times is too many sledgehammers to the face. "Hey Bette, I know you're busy, but remind me to remind that totally pointless folksy bull dyke to FIX THE BALCONY BEFORE THE PARTY JENNY IS COMING TO. YOU KNOW HOW SHE LIKES TO BE ON THE PRECIPICE OF THINGS."
Dylan + Helena: What was the damn point? Poor Helena. She started out so horrible and evil, got awesome, then abandoned. Some of my favourite scenes were when Dana dumps Alice and she can't stop crying, so Helena becomes her friend and they do some weird buddy yoga where Alice is on Helena's back just wailing. Those two need a sitcom, not the terrible-sounding prison spinoff Leisha Hailey has agreed to.
Bette + Tina: Elizabeth Berkeley was also pointless. We ended with Kit thinking Bette slept with her, then Tina didn't find out in any capacity. Since for once Bette wasn't lying, and everyone thought she was, it would've been an interesting test of their relationship. (But then maybe they thought "THIS THING HAS BEEN TESTED ENOUGH, SHIT." But THEN they shouldn't have brought in Showgirl.)
Hey, remember that whole season that was built around Jenny's movie? Shouldn't that movie have come out?
It just felt really underwritten, where they set up a bunch of Jenny-centric confrontations that never happened because, what, we're supposed to believe ANYBODY could be the killer? And everyone disappeared at one point or another, so even though we always knew where everyone was -- shilling for iphones in the media room or what have you -- we were supposed to THINK someone was killing Jenny? And then the Niki "curveball"? And poor Mia Kirshner, after six years of playing every shitty thing they threw at her to the hilt, doesn't get either a good monologue OR a death scene?
And WHAT was with Lucy Lawless? First of all I didn't even know it was her. I saw her name in the credits and had to think back. She was a terrible police officer, all smiley and weird! And that bullshit in the final scene with the "We're pretty close knit" and "We all stick together" -- that shit was as fake as the first ep of the year when Lucy Lawless told Bette and Tina they had a beautiful family. IN-APPROPRIATE Detective Xena!
And that walk at the end was just no.
Things I liked:
No theme song! (What would've been better is the original theme song. That was dope.)
That Shane and Bette were both wet -- those are absolutely the two most likely to pull Jenny out of the pool. That was a great Screenwriting 101 show-don't-tell moment which must've gotten in there by accident, because Ilene Chaiken would not know subtlety if it were a pregnant man in an abortion clinic.
Limited Kit, Max and Cybill Shepherd. (AND no Max baby-having scenes.)
Basically everyone who was ever on the show popping up on that video, except for Dawn Denbo and Her Lover Cindy, an amazing addition to S5.
Alice's phone calls about Tasha and Jamie were hilarious.
I feel like maybe they shot a two-hour finale and had to hack it down. A lot of things were set-up/referenced-to that we
seemed to be lacking info on, ie Dylan moving in with Helena and the general pissiness of them after last week's love fest; or missing completely like Shane freaking out about Molly, or Tina screaming about the movie.
Which begs the question, and I have asked myself every single season since the second, why watch? Heavy-handed writing without a shroud of nuance, weird soapboxing moments that never rang true (as in this year's ep when they rushed Angelica to the hospital and the check-in lady told Bette and Tina that only one of them could be the mother, and Bette yelled "This is Los Angeles! There are gay parents on every fucking street corner!" Um...exactly, so why is this scene here? Or last year when they all bashed the government in front of their new army friend Tasha), Moira-to-Max, Jenny's carnival flashbacks...
But I will watch most anything that the shit can be acted out of (which is why I tend to avoid horror, action and most procedural dramas). The L Word has never had a perfect cast -- Karina Lombard was stilted, Rosanna Arquette tried too hard, Cybill Shepherd was downright embarrassing (with Jane Lynch not far behind), I never for a second believed Angus (Dallas Roberts) was straight, and Daniela Sea is the worst actor on television. She makes David Caruso and Mischa Barton look like Day-Lewis and Streep -- but it has an excellent cast that has done a lot with a lot of crap. Beals, Holloman and especially Kirshner and Hailey were always game, always entertaining, and always able to nimbly toe the Mary-Louise Parker ComiTragic Line, which must be approached with a deft, skillful step. Kirshner had the hardest arc to play, beginning as a midwestern innocent, into tortured sexual confusion with scary backstory, to successful asshole writer, to nothing, to pariah. Beals, the only name we knew when this thing started, had an even harder job of playing someone who ultimately never changed, and had to win back the audience every time Bette and Tina broke up, which was too many damn times.
Performance often trumps material, and though Chaiken mostly went wrong (take away the lesbian angle and you just have a bunch of yuppie assholes, ie Sex and the City, without a sense of humour), that's the one place she did good. I watched till the bitter end, and I was never bored. Can ER fans say the same?
[this is good] I was completely unimpressed and left feeling empty.
Posted by: KymberStyle | 03/26/2009 at 07:46 PM